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Visualization and Analysis Tools for Global DatasetsThe Atmospheric General Circulation by Wallace et al. (2023) Several research groups have created software packages for displaying and analyzing gridded fields derived from the reanalyses and from a variety of atmospheric and other geophysical datasets and sharing them with the scientific community via the internet. These resources can be used by instructors in posing homework exercises or class projects and they can be used independently by readers to gain ''hands-on'' experience to complement the reading of the text and class lectures. The choice of which software to use depends on whether readers are mainly interested in data visualization or analysis, and on how much time they are willing to invest to become proficient in the use of the software. The tools for visualizing instantaneous fields require very little effort to learn and some of the analysis tools are also quite straightforward. Visualization toolsAll the software packages described here offer visualization tools. The simplest that we have encountered is the University of Chile's R-Explorer which displays ERA5 Reanalysis products from 1979 onward. It offers the fields of geopotential, temperature, vector wind and horizontal wind components, vertical velocity at the 850 and 300 hPa levels, as well as SLP, 2 m temperature, precipitation, CAPE and precipitable water at 00, 06, 12 and 18 UT. Fields can be displayed on various map projections. Time sequences can be shown as a series of maps or at a specified grid point. The English version of the menu can be selected from the dialog box at the bottom of the page. A somewhat more full-featured visualization package created by Cameron Beccario is made available on his website earth.nullschool.net. It displays fields from the NOAA National Weather Service Global Forecast System (GFS) model, archived dating back to 2013 at 3 h intervals as well as from a number of other providers. The software plots maps of streamlines and various scalar fields such as rain rate, relative humidity CAPE, and concentrations of particulates and a suite of chemical species. Meteorological fields are available at the surface and at the 1000, 850, 700, 500, 250, 70, and 10 hPa levels, Maps are also available for ocean currents and waves, SST, and SST anomalies. The displays can be viewed on various map projections. Neither R-Explorer nor Earth.nullschool.net sites provide climatological mean fields or monthly or seasonal means. To video them it is necessary to use the analysis tools described next. Analysis ToolsHere we offer brief descriptions of some of the online analysis tools. NOAA/PSL Climate Plotting and Analysis ToolsThe suite of Interactive Climate Analysis and Plotting Tools made available by the NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory, accessible through their website. This site provides access to the NCEP Reanalyses, the 20th Century Reanalyses, SST and OLR fields and several other datasets with as daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal, and annual time resolution. It enables users to create composite and correlation maps based on a selection of reference time series, including indices of the QBO (Ch. 10), ENSO (Ch. 17), and various teleconnection patterns (Ch. 13), and to extract or upload time series that can be used to create composite and correlation/regression maps. Other capabilities that it offers include time-filtering and creating animations. The solution to Exercise 1.3 in the Exercise Manual shows examples of how to use it to create composite maps. KNMI's Climate ExplorerThe Climate Explorer developed by Geert Jan van Oldenborgh of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute provides routine and advanced analysis tools for a wide variety of applications including a suite of online climate indices, gridded observational and model-based datasets, including nine different atmospheric reanalyses products. Simulations of the climate over the historical period and for future climate from climate models used in the most recent IPCC assessments are also available. Analysis capabilities include (but are not limited to) calculating statistical moments, detrending, filtering, creating correlation and regression maps, and performing matrix operations used in empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis. For an example of how it can be used to perform EOF analysis, see Supplementary Figures xxx. IRI/LDEO Climate Data LibraryThe Climate Data Library of the International Research Institute at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory makes use of the Ingrid Data Analysis language based on a set of predefined functions. This site provides access to a broad selection of geophysical datasets from many different sources and a selection of analysis tools. Online tutorials are provided to help users get started. |
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